The BroadsheetDAILY ~ News of Lower Manhattan ~ 12/4/19

Pondering Whether $300 Million and 16.5 Feet of Protection Will Matter

85 Broad Street parking garage after Sandy

At the October 29 meeting of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) board, Catherine McVay Hughes raised a potentially troubling question. As BPCA management reviewed plans to spend some $300 million on resiliency measures designed to protect the community against future sea-level rise, extreme-weather events, and climate change, she questioned one of the key assumptions upon which these plans are predicated.

“I think a lot of folks are looking at the depth-to-design elevation flood line,” Ms. McVay Hughes began. “And there was a report that was recently issued… [in which] this technical expert suggested that the 16.5 feet needs to be raised another two to three feet. So I just wanted to make sure that what the Battery Park City will be planning to do will be adequate, as well.”

The metric to which Ms. McVay Hughes was referring comes from the lower end of the mid-range of predicted coastal flood heights for Lower Manhattan by the 2080s. A 2014 report by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, entitled “Climate Change in New York State,” noted that middle range for such predictions at the Battery was 16.5 to 18.3 feet. (The lowest bracket was 16.1 feet or less, while the most extreme scenarios ranged up to 19.9 feet.)

Gwen Dawson, the BPCA’s vice president for real property, replied, “we’ve set our design flood elevation not at a specific height but to address a 100 year storm in the year 2050.” This was a reference to a separate framework, contained in the same 2014 report. In that set of projections, the middle range of flood heights at the Battery for the 2050s is estimated at 15.9 to 18.8 feet.

(In these scenarios, the most optimistic outlook is 15.7 feet or below, while the grimmest is 17.5 feet.)

“That’s the design criteria that we’ve established,” Ms. Dawson continued. “That being said, that means that the actual design flood elevation — depending on coastal modeling, depending on where you’re talking about the intervention occurring — may be higher than the 16.5 feet. And in some cases in the South, we already know it’s higher around Pier A and Wagner Park.”

“But certainly, being also aware and cognizant that we’re making our best guess with the projections that have been provided,” she added, “which may be right and which may not be, we want to make sure that whatever it is that we’re doing is flexible and can accommodate adjustments. So that if we determine that we need it to be higher at some point, there is the capability of adding something onto the interventions that we’re designing right now. And certainly, I think that’s going to be important for all the resiliency projects, because we’ll have to adjust. We’re going to have to adapt and adjust these measures over time. So that’s the way that we’re approaching it.”

Ms. McVay Hughes continued, “people may not remember, but there were ten to 30 foot waves out in the harbor during Super Storm Sandy.”

Ms. Dawson replied, “we are designing the Battery Park City Resiliency Projects to withstand storm surge. The storm surge, rainwater events, or sea level rise – that’s all being taken into account.”

Ms. McVay Hughes’s question touches upon an emerging field of scholarship within the broader discipline of climate science. This new school of analysis finds fault with the predictions of a generation of researchers — for precisely the opposite of the reason made popular by media outlets that give a platform to climate-change skeptics. There is a growing body of evidence to indicate that climate scientists have, for decades, been systematically understating the evidence and soft-pedaling projections about global warming.

This movement first attracted notice in 2006, when an Australian government scientist published an essay, “Are Scientists Underestimating Climate Change?” in the journal Eos, concluding that, “many scientists may have consciously or unconsciously downplayed the more extreme possibilities at the high end of the uncertainty range, in an attempt to appear moderate and ‘responsible.'”

This growing shift in perception gathered additional momentum in 2013, when a team of scientists from Princeton University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Alberta, and St. John’s University published a landmark study, “Climate Change Prediction: Erring on the Side of Least Drama?” in the peer-reviewed journal, Global Environmental Change. This paper argued that a penchant for understatement, “is consistent with a broad pattern in earth science, in play since the mid-19th century, of eschewing catastrophic accounts of natural phenomena.” They also cited, “a broader pattern in science of skepticism toward dramatic explanations of natural phenomena [arising] from the core scientific values of objectivity, rationality, and dispassion, which lead scientists to be skeptical of any claim that might evoke an emotional response.” In a review of this paper, Scientific American noted said of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that, “across two decades and thousands of pages of reports, the world’s most authoritative voice on climate science has consistently understated the rate and intensity of climate change and the danger those impacts represent, say a growing number of studies on the topic.”

A 2018 study, “What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk,” argued that, “the bulk of climate research has tended to underplay these risks, and exhibited a preference for conservative projections and scholarly reticence,” while also averring that, “IPCC reports tend toward reticence and caution… downplaying the more extreme and more damaging outcomes.” The 2018 paper concluded that this tendency, “is now becoming dangerously misleading with the acceleration of climate impacts globally. What were lower-probability, higher-impact events are now becoming more likely.”

And this year, Discerning Experts, a new book (by two of the authors of the 2013 study) has made the case that, “climate change and its impacts are emerging faster than scientists previously thought, are consistent with observations that we and other colleagues have made identifying a pattern in assessments of climate research of underestimation of certain key climate indicators, and therefore underestimation of the threat of climate disruption.”

At a March 12 community meeting hosted by the BPCA, on the subject of resiliency, one longtime Battery Park City resident submitted a written question: “As the river is rising what makes you think [protection against] a 100-year storm is sufficient?”

Heather Morgan, the Sustainability and Risk Management Lead from AECOM (the design firm BPCA has retained for its North and South Battery Park City Resiliency Projects), replied, “you have to find this good balance between how far have you designed for a certain scenario in the future, but what if that future kind of shifts or turns? What if sea level rise goes a lot faster than we thought? You want to be able to actually adapt your structure or your alignment or your project. So right now a 100-year event in 2050 is what we consider to be a measurable, understandable projection of what might happen. And if we decide to lean forward further and design to a larger event, that would be something that would be transparently discussed.”

Ms. Dawson added, “We’ve discussed this actually, whether the 2050 100-year event is actually aggressive enough, given the frequency with which things change and the projections change. We are matching our design flood elevations and our standards to those that the City has implemented in their East Side Coastal Resiliency, and the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Program, because we want them all to be compatible with each other.”

“However, one of the things that we are going to be mindful of as we continue the design,” she continued, “is are there things that we can take into account? Can we perhaps create a foundation that might be strong enough to support a little bit higher measure if we decide that we need to add something more in the future. So we want to make whatever we do adaptable, so that if things change more rapidly than we’re anticipating, we have a plan that we can then add onto or modify in some way to accommodate that.”

Juliette Recamier was only child of the King’s counsellor and his wife Julie Mattan. Beautiful and educated, she became a bride at aged fifteen to a banker 30 years her senior and became a socialite, whose salon drew Parisians from the political and literary circles of the early 19th century. Rumors arose her natural father had married her to make her his heir. This was at the height of the revolutionary terror and, if he lost his head, she would inherit his money. Some biographers give credence to this theory, but it remains unproven.

771 – Austrasian king Carloman I dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne king of the now complete Frankish Kingdom.
1259 – Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels.
1619 – Thirty-eight colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred, Virginia. The group’s charter proclaims that the day “be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
1783 – At Fraunces Tavern, General George Washington bids farewell to his officers.
1791 – The first edition of The Observer, the world’s first Sunday newspaper, is published.
1861 – The 109 Electors of the several states of the Confederate States of America unanimously elect Jefferson Davis as President and Alexander H. Stephens as Vice President.
1865 – North Carolina ratifies 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, followed soon by Georgia, and U.S. slaves were legally free within 2 weeks
1872 – The crewless American ship Mary Celeste is found by the Canadian brig Dei Gratia. The ship had been abandoned for nine days but was only slightly damaged.
1875 – New York City politician Boss Tweed escapes from prison; he is later recaptured in Spain.
1918 – President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.
1943 – World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes down the Works Progress Administration, because of the high levels of wartime employment in the United States.
1954 – The first Burger King is opened in Miami, Florida.

Henri Matisse Le Bateau 1953. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.( right side up)

1961 – Museum of Modern Art hangs Matisse’s Le Bateau upside down for 47 days
1965 – Launch of Gemini 7 with crew members Frank Borman and Jim Lovell. The Gemini 7 spacecraft was the passive target for the first crewed space rendezvous performed by the crew of Gemini 6A.
1969 – Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot and killed during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers
1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein becomes San Francisco’s first female mayor.
1991 – Terry A. Anderson is released after seven years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut; he is the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon.
1991 – Pan American World Airways ceases its operations after 64 years.
2006 – An adult giant squid is caught on video by Kubodera near the Ogasawara Islands, 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo.

To stroll in Tribeca in 2019 is to apprehend what is happening throughout Lower Manhattan. Buildings – along with their occupants and uses – are in perpetual flux. Amid this tumult is a symbol of local continuity: the Church Street School for Music and Art.

Recently, the Broadsheet asked Dr. Ecklund-Flores, who has been the sole proprietor of CSS for many years, to reflect on the move north and the challenges faced in relocating to a new neighborhood. To read more…

Connection Reduction

CB1 to Consider Cutbacks in Number of Stops on Free Bus Service

Map of the Downtown Connection free shuttle bus route.

Tonight (Tuesday, December 3) the Transportation Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1) will hear a presentation from the Downtown Alliance about planned cutbacks to the number of stops on its free Downtown Connection shuttle bus.

The plans include the elimination of six stops within Battery Park City.

LuminariesWinter Garden
This holiday tradition in the heart of Lower Manhattan features a canopy of colorful lights emanating from hundreds of suspended lanterns.This interactive exhibit features three Wishing Stations located on the ground that will allow visitors to send a touch-activated wish to the canopy of lanterns above, activating a magical display of lights and colors. Brookfield Place

1PM

Adult Chorus

6 River Terrace
Directed by Church Street School for Music and Art, the BPC Chorus is open to all adults who love to sing. Learn a mix of contemporary and classic songs, and perform at community events throughout the year.Battery Park City Authority

New York Academy of Sciences at 7 World Trade Center
At its core, awe and wonder appear to be powerful emotions that can inform and shape our attitudes toward ourselves and others, especially in relation to the larger meaning and purpose of our lives. What are the psychological underpinnings of these universal emotions? How does awe, for example, relate to self-knowledge, and more generally to understanding the enigmatic contradictions of human nature? Is it possible to cultivate and develop this emotion as an ethical incentive in our relations with others? Are awe and wonder capable of awakening and engendering moral transformation? Does the emotion of awe lie at the root of the religious impulse in humans? And is there any room left for a sense of the miraculous in today’s increasingly scientific and secular world? $5-$15 7 World Trade Center.

The 9/11 Tribute Museum, at 88 Greenwich Street, which is endangered by skyrocketing property values in Lower Manhattan.

The 9/11 Tribute Museum, a highly regarded local cultural institution, is grappling with a precarious outlook, according to a story first published in Crain’s New York Business, which says that the space housing the facility, located at Greenwich and Rector Streets, may be sold out from under the organization by its landlord.

Many ships pass Lower Manhattan on their way to and from the Midtown Passenger Ship Terminal. Others may be seen on their way to or from piers in Brooklyn and Bayonne. Stated times, when appropriate, are for passing the Colgate clock in Jersey City, New Jersey, and are based on sighting histories, published schedules and intuition. They are also subject to tides, fog, winds, freak waves, hurricanes and the whims of upper management.

Click to watch the November 12 sun set over the harbor.

Gotham Girls Winter Futsal League & Formativo Training

Register Today!

Gotham Girls F.C. – the only NYC all-girls soccer club is running our Winter Futsal League for girls ages 7 to 16.

(Our foundational development soccer – Formativo – is available for girls ages 7-10).

Your Next Neighbors Might Be Vastly Less Interesting, But Better Able to Pay High Rents

Even as public art proliferates in Lower Manhattan (seen here in the form of a new mural at the World Trade Center), artists themselves are being driven from the area by skyrocketing housing costs, a new report finds.

A new report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer documents that Lower Manhattan is undergoing an exodus of artists and other “creative economy” workers, who are being driven away primarily by skyrocketing costs for housing.

Mr. Stringer’s analysis, “The Creative Economy: Art, Culture and Creativity in New York City,” establishes that between 2008 and 2017, the combined footprint of Community Boards 1 and 2 (meaning Manhattan south of 14th Street, west of the Bowery and Pearl Street, and south of the Brooklyn Bridge) has lost 3,505 residents who work in the creative sector — defined any industry the primary output of which is creative or cultural (from museums and art galleries, to film and television production, theater and dance companies, fashion, publishing, advertising, and more). To read more…

A map, compiled by New York University’s Furman Center (which advances research and debate on housing, neighborhoods, and urban policy)illustrating the dozens of Lower Manhattan buildings — erstwhile office towers,converted to residential use — that have benefited from the 421-g program.

More Financial District tenants are going to court to demand restitution from years of illegally high rent, on the heels of a June ruling by New York State’s highest court, which found that as many as 5,000 Lower Manhattan apartments had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits.

The first to file suit in the wake of this decision were Bruce Hackney and Timothy Smith, tenants at Ten Hanover Square, who brought their complaint in October.

At issue is the 421-g subsidy program, which was designed to encourage Downtown’s transformation into a residential district, by offering rich incentives (chiefly in the form of tax abatements) to developers who converted former office buildings — south of a line connecting Murray Street to City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge — into apartment towers.

A trio of new analyses points to the self-evident conclusion that Lower Manhattan is a mind-numbingly expensive place to reside.

Tribeca’s Murray Street was calculated to be the third-most expensive anywhere in the five boroughs, with a median sales price of $5.4 million, and a volume of sales in excess of $364 million. To read more…

Matthew Fenton

Aggregation and Promulgation

Council Member and Borough President Push for Transparency in Development

A proposed law now under consideration by the City Council would compel disclosure of air rights transfers that make possible “super-tall” towers, such as the one planned for 80 South Street, which would have a roof height greater than that of One World Trade Center.

Community Board 1 has endorsed a proposed new law — sponsored by a City Council member representing the Upper East Side and supported by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer — that would require City government to notify local officials whenever development rights are transferred between building lots. Such transfers are often used by developers to maximize the zoning potential for the site of a planned skyscraper.

Work with well-reviewed author of five E-books, developing and implementing outreach strategies. Includes writing, placement, research, new outlets and on-line advertising. Savvy social media skills a must. Downtown location.

A Convenient Connection to the Airport Visible from Lower Manhattan Rooftops May Be Less Than Ten Years Away

Seen from Newark Airport, the spires of Lower Manhattan appear almost close enough to touch. But antiquated transportation infrastructure makes the trip to Lower Manhattan, in some cases, longer than the flights from which travelers arriving at the airport have just disembarked.

The Regional Plan Association (RPA) recently partnered with the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association (DLMA) to build support for a proposed rail connection between Lower Manhattan and Newark Airport. A report the two organizations produced together, “Taking the PATH to Newark Airport,” summarizes the potential and the prospects for such a link, which local leaders have long pushed for.

Nadler Sponsors Legislation to Make Lower Manhattan Heliopolis No More

Congressman Jerry Nadler, flanked by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and State Senator Brian Kavanagh at a City Hall rally, announces proposed legislation to ban non-essential helicopter flights from New York skies.

Support is building among decision-makers to heed a decade long call by Lower Manhattan community leaders to enact a comprehensive ban on non-essential helicopter flights in New York’s airspace.

On October 26, Congressman Jerry Nadler was joined on the steps of City Hall by fellow federal legislators Nydia Velazquez and Carolyn Maloney, as well as Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and State Senator Brian Kavanagh, along with a coalition of activists and community leaders, to announce a new proposed law — the Improving Helicopter Safety Act of 2019. To read more…

Matthew Fenton

Preservation, Renovation, Elevation,

and a Donation

Seaport Structure Reborn as Flood-Proof Food Emporia as Owner Celebrates with Support for Local Charity

The Tin Building as it will appear in 2021, when renovations are complete and a new food hall and market, helmed by renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, is slated to open.

The South Street Seaport’s historic Tin Building reached a milestone on Wednesday, when the last and highest structural beam was placed (after being ceremonially signed by dozens of well-wishers) within a reconstructed edifice, following an unprecedented, years-long effort to preserve it.

A map, compiled by New York University’s Furman Center (which advances research and debate on housing, neighborhoods, and urban policy) illustrating the dozens of Lower Manhattan buildings — erstwhile office towers, converted to residential use — that have benefited from the 421-g program.

In the wake of a June ruling by New York State’s highest court that tenants in Financial District rental buildings had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits, a pair of apartment dwellers is litigating to recoup the money they lost by paying inflated, market-rate rents for years.

In October, Bruce Hackney and Timothy Smith, tenants at Ten Hanover Square, filed suit against their landlord, alleging that the owner’s, “failure to follow rent regulations was part of a fraudulent scheme to deregulate apartments in the building.” To read more…

Matthew Fenton

Eighteen Years Later, What about the Children?

Schools Agency Begins Belated Outreach Effort to Former Lower Manhattan Students at Risk of 9/11 Illness

The City’s Department of Education is partnering with the United Federation of Teachers union for an unusual mission: tracking down former New York City public school students who were pupils at Lower Manhattan schools on September 11, 2001 (or in the months that followed) and informing them that their health may be at risk. The project will also seek to put these students in touch with the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund. To read more…

City Council member Margaret Chin has brokered an agreement that will preserve affordability for rental tenants at Knickerbocker Village, a giant apartment complex in the Two Bridges neighborhood, which was built by a public-private partnership in the 1930s.

The complex bears striking similarities to Battery Park City’s largest residential development, Gateway Plaza. Both boast multiple buildings (12 on the Lower East Side and six in Battery Park City), surrounding a central garden. Each has a similar number of apartments: 1,590 for Knickerbocker Village and 1705 in Gateway Plaza. And the two projects were conceived as bulwarks of affordability.

City Council member Margaret Chin is co-sponsoring a package of bills to clamp down on rampant film and television production in Lower Manhattan.

Although the new laws, if enacted, will have City-wide effect, their impact would be especially significant in the square mile below Chambers Street, where dozens of movies and TV shows commandeer local streets (sometimes for days at a time) each year.

Lawsuit Over Similarity Between One World Trade and Architecture Student’s Design Moves Ahead

Jeehoon Park’s 1999 design for a skyscraper with eight sides that taper between a square base and a square roof.

One thing is reasonably certain: In 1999, Jeehoon Park, then a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture, created a design for a very tall building with a large square base tapering to a smaller square top. In Mr. Park’s vision, the square formed by the roof was rotated 45 degrees relative to the one at the ground level, so that the center-points on each side of the quadrilateral below corresponded to the corners of the one above, and vice versa. And instead of four vertical walls, the structure’s facade consisted of eight elongated triangles.

A new report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer finds that in one Lower Manhattan zip code — 10013, which covers parts of western Tribeca SoHo, and the Canal Street corridor in Chinatown — there are 319 empty retail spaces, comprising almost 300,000 square feet of unused property. To read more…

Matthew Fenton

Aesthetic Inventory

BPCA’s Public Art Collection Represents Multiple Layers of Value

The Pylons, a pair of granite and stainless steel obelisks by sculptor Martin Puryear

The Battery Park City Authority, has completed an inventory and appraisal of its public art collection. This is part of a broad effort to take stock of the Authority’s ongoing role as a patron and custodian of pieces that represent an integral thread in the fabric of the community, as evidenced by the fact that space and funding for public art were both set aside decades ago, in the neighborhood’s first master plan, before the first building was erected.

BPCA Puts the Brakes on Conversions of Rental Buildings within Community

Residents of rental apartments in Battery Park City who fear being thrown out of their homes as developers plan to convert those buildings to condominiums can rest a little bit easier, according to the Battery Park City Authority.

At the October 2 meeting of the Battery Park City Committee of Community Board 1, Authority president Benjamin Jones said, “I want to talk about some of the potential condo conversions that people are concerned about. We have been very clear with developers over the last year, and then some, about our position — that we want to preserve the rental housing that exists in Battery Park City.” To read more…

Matthew Fenton

Breaking It Down

Composting Catches on in Battery Park City

Jake Jacevicius and Joshua DeVoto of BPCA parks operations dump out a binful of fruit and vegetable scraps where the neighborhood’s composting process takes place.

You’re probably heard of the farm-to-table movement. Thanks to the Battery Park City Authority’s compost initiative, there’s a burgeoning table-to-earth movement in this Lower Manhattan community.

What happens to the scraps after you’ve dropped them in the bin? How do your apple peels and corn husks turn into rich, beneficial compost?

Death Came Calling at the Corner of Wall and Broad Streets, in Lower Manhattan’s First Major Terrorist Attack

In an instant, both wagon and horse were vaporized, and the closest automobile was tossed twenty feet in the air. Incredibly, the iconic bronze of George Washington surveys the devastation from the steps of the Sub-Treasury without so much as a scratch.

As the noon hour approached on a fall Thursday morning in 1920, a horse-drawn wagon slowly made its way west down Wall Street toward “the Corner,” the high-powered intersection of Wall and Broad. Its driver came to a gentle stop in front of the Assay Office, where stockpiles of gold and silver were stored and tested for purity. But theft was not his motive.